


prologue

by tearbending (maremote)



Series: azula redemptionverse [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: (zukka), Accidental Self-Harm, Azula (Avatar) Redemption, Azula deserves better, Background Relationships, Bisexual Sokka (Avatar), Comics? What Comics?, Gay Zuko (Avatar), Gen, I Haven't Watched Legend Of Korra And At This Point I'm Afraid To Start, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Lesbian Azula (Avatar), Lesbian Mai (Avatar), Lesbian Ty Lee (Avatar), Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, Ozai (Avatar) is an Asshole, Redemption, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 15:55:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28620672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maremote/pseuds/tearbending
Summary: The first thing Azula loses is her mind. The second thing she loses is the Agni Kai she barely remembers challenging Zuko to. The third thing is time. So much time.
Relationships: Azula & Sokka (Avatar), Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Iroh & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: azula redemptionverse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2098305
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26





	prologue

**Author's Note:**

> this fic has been rattling around in my brain for ages and i decided after about 5k words' worth of outlining and MANY spotify playlists, i might as well write it

The first time Azula fights her brother after his banishment, it's purely out of necessity. She remembers it with perfect clarity.

It would have been  _ so easy _ to bring Zuko to the jail cell waiting for him if that idiotic captain hadn't called them  _ prisoners. _ Of course, even before that, the Dragon of the West wasn't fooled. But Iroh has always been too weak to force Zuko's hand. 

"You  _ lied _ to me!" he yells, angry and hurt, and his stupidity will never cease to amaze her. "Like I've never done that before," she replies, and lets him come to her.

It's not a  _ bother _ to face Zuko in battle. Iroh would have been a challenge, but Zuko? He's easy. Even as he tosses two guards and the captain overboard without breaking a sweat and throws his fists down, flame spurting from his clenched hands, she's not concerned. 

(Far behind him, she can hear Iroh calling for them to go. Predictable. It's almost  _ infuriating _ how Iroh chooses to hold himself back, to weaken himself out of some sick need for validation from his nephew.) 

She's two years his junior, but strong and fast, and most importantly, smart. She lets him do the work for her, and has to give him credit; his forms aren't bad, his stance strong, as he sweeps wide arcs of fire towards her with frustrated yells and brings down flaming fists towards her face. 

_ He really never learns, does he? _ She's almost embarassed for him as she dodges every blast, steady on her feet. His fist comes down towards her, fire blazing out the side of it. His stance is wide-open, barely defended, and she takes advantage, grabbing his wrist with her right hand and reaching under his outstretched arm with her left. She's got his elbow hooked on her left arm, and she uses her weight to move him around her, twisting his wrist enough to be uncomfortably painful but not seriously damaging. All it takes is a good push from her left arm as she lets go of his wrist with her right and he's stumbling back across the deck with cry, breathing hard. His eyes are narrowed to slits- well,  _ eye _ \- and that ridiculous pheonix plume is quivering with indignation. 

"You know, Father blames uncle for the loss of the North Pole," she snarks. "And he considers you a miserable failure for not finding the Avatar." He flinches, and-  _ There it is, _ she thinks. The barb about uncle doesn't hit as hard as the one about  _ him, _ so she takes that and runs with it. 

"Why would he want  _ you _ back home, except to lock you up where you can no longer embarrass him?"  _ That _ does it, and Zuko leaps at her. It's so easy to blind him. There's a joke somewhere in there about Father and his silly outburst in the war room, she realizes, and bites back a laugh, her limbs loose and graceful. Oh, she  _ likes _ this part, when she's made him as mad as she can, and launches into a perfect backward cartwheel to avoid his fireball. 

She  _ could _ just dodge it, but this is  _ so _ much more fun. Rising perfectly from a crouch, Azula steps back and ducks sideways against one of Zuko's fists, then reaches up to grab his wrist- he's learned, though, and he avoids her grasp, pushing downwards with a particularly violent spurt of flame. She leaps backwards and tries again, but still he pulls away (Looks like she'll have to use new tricks, then.) and spins on his heel with a fiery roundhouse kick that's still  _ far _ too slow. She ducks with ample time to avoid it and, on her way up, almost as an afterthought, scratches red lines into his forehead with her nails, just because she can. She lets their dance go on a few beats longer before she smirks at him and punches fire into the air; he jumps backwards and rolls down the ramp, landing in a heap at the bottom.

If he's not going to come quietly, she may as well kill him, she realizes, and is gearing up to do just that when  _ Iroh _ intervenes. 

_ Iroh. _

The last time Azula fights her brother before her imprisonment, it's out of...

She remembers almost none of it.

She doesn't remember much of the asylum intake process, either, though. 

* * *

The first thing Azula loses is her mind. 

The second thing she loses is the Agni Kai she barely remembers challenging Zuko to. 

The third thing is time. So much time.

There are men in pale tunics at some points. At others, there are women, and they brush strands of hair from Azula's forehead and whisper to her, rake their hands through her hair, pass sponges over her body, pry her lips apart and force food and drink down her throat. 

She is vividly aware, at some point, of someone above her emptying a bucket of hot water, and consciousness floods back into her as the water drips off her nose and eyelids. She is standing, naked, shoulders hunched, arms held close to her chest, fingers trembling. She looks down and watches droplets zigzag down her calves until they puddle by her feet. She is dimly aware of thin red scratches along her arms. A second bucket is emptied over her head, and she fades again. 

The women push and pull with gentle insistence. She is aware, somewhere under all the fog, that she is being maneuvered into chairs and beds and cells. Sometimes a lady dressed in striking red will sit her down and talk to her patiently for hours at a time. 

Azula hears none of it- well, almost none. Something in her jerks her into clarity at one point, and she hears the woman ask, "Can you hear me?" 

Azula mumbles under breath, jerking her head to the side. "What was that?" asks the woman, and she leans closer. Azula brings her head up slowly, meets the lady's gaze with as much fiery intensity as she can manage, and spits in her face. 

Someone screams, and then there are hands grabbing her, and someone is sobbing, and Azula fades.

The women are the only constant. They soothe and scold and force and Azula wants to spit at them that she's  _ not a child _ , but nothing feels quite real. She feels like she's stuck in honey. 

She remembers the  _ tanghulu _ their old Earth Kingdom cook used to make them. Sometimes, if Ozai was busy, he'd let them watch him make it, and sometimes he'd let them try to make it themselves. Zuko always burned his syrup, or bit the fruit too fast. Azula's was always flawless. She'd wait for the translucent, reflective gloss that meant the sugar-water had hardened, and then whack the fruit against the table before she ate it to see the cracks spiderweb through the bruised food. 

Azula feels like her brain has been dipped in sugar-water syrup, and every time it hardens she's beaten full of cracks and then dipped in cloying, hot confusion again.

Sometimes her mother joins the women attendants, mocking and sad and beautiful. " _ I love you, Azula, _ " she whispers, and Azula screams and launches herself towards her, nails sharp and mind foggy and blunted.

She falls asleep with blood caked underneath her fingernails. She wakes up to find her hands clumsily manicured short. 

* * *

Azula dreams. 

Sometimes, she dreams of forests and monsters and her mother with a different face, of a little girl who calls Azula's mother  _ mother _ and is held with so much gentleness that Azula's skin itches.

Other times, she dreams she is staring into a mirror, unable to look away from her own reflection. Her hair mocks her, tangled and uneven, but her arms are unexplainably heavy and it's more than she can do to pull them up to try to fix it. Her eyes sting with the humiliation of her failure, and she blinks away the tears, examining herself in the reflective surface with growing desperation until she realizes that the left side of her tunic is crossed over the right and wakes up screaming. 

* * *

She doesn't bother learning the names of the psychiatric instutition attendants. 

There's one who's all smiles and chirpy conversation, bubbly and bouncy and full of energy. (She reminds Azula of Ty Lee. It makes Azula want to grab that stupid ponytail and bash her brains out on the tile floor.) She talks to Azula alternately like she's a child and like she's her best friend, prattling on about fashions and gossip and names that Azula doesn't know and doesn't care to. "Come on," she coos, one day when Azula's been so  _ good _ that they've taken her out of the straitjacket. "It's good! Just try one bite."

Azula glares at the spoonful of omurice held irritatingly close to her face and is able to drag herself into reality just enough to smack it up to hit Not-Ty-Lee in the forehead. Her yelp of pain and surprise is  _ extremely _ satisfying. 

It's almost worth being pinned down and force-fed the rest of her meal and spending the next week with her arms strapped to her chest.

Most of the other attendants only every wait on her once before they're whisked off to work in another part of the psychiatric institution. They treat Azula with wary pity, like she's a wounded animal. The only other attendant she's familiar with enough to be able to pick out from a lineup regards her with a kind of the same pity mixed with irritation. She's all patience up until she doesn't think Azula deserves it anymore, and then it's all "Try harder," and "You can't live like this forever." Azula should want to kill her, too, but she finds her ridiculously boring.

The only one who doesn't look at her with pity has sharp almond eyes and moves with quick, jerking movements. She's dressed in the same loose clothing all the others are, but there's the suggestion of strength in the muscles her clothes occasionally cling to, the broad shoulders that fill out the tunic better than most, the quick, decisive way she steps. She brings Azula her food and holds her down when she refuses to eat. She talks to her like Azula could talk back even if she wanted to- and it's not useless, cheerful banter like the others are so fond of- ("How'd my favourite patient today?" "The weather's beautiful! Maybe we should open a window." God, Azula wants to  _ puke. _ Ideally all over Not-Ty-Lee.) 

She introduces herself the first time she brings Azula her food, but Azula doesn't bother learning the name. She introduces herself  _ again _ the second time, and launches into listing all the other attendants' in the rooms' names, to their obvious dismay. It occurs to Azula that to know these peoples' names is to be able to hold them accountable for whatever they do- or even things they  _ don't _ , she muses, wondering when Zuko is visiting next. Maybe she can get someone fired. Might be fun. 

All the names Sharp-Eyes lists off muddle together in Azula's head, though. There's a Naoko, she knows that. A Kazumi. Shiori. Kaori. Usagi. Whatever. Sharp-Eyes'll probably introduce herself again the next time she comes by, she thinks, and stops paying attention. 

Sharp-Eyes doesn't introduce herself the next time she comes by, or the next. First Azula is too full of pride to ask, and then she falls back into cloying mind-honey.

* * *

Mai and Ty Lee have come to visit her. 

Mai's eyes are full of passion, and her knives are slipped down her sleeves into her hands. Ty Lee's eyes are cold and cruel. 

"I love Zuko more than I fear you," Mai taunts, and then there are blades slicing Azula's skin, pulling the cut open, and Ty Lee  _ leaps _ at her and chi-blocks her so she can't move. 

"You underestimated me," Ty Lee hisses, and then the whole of her weight is pinning Azula down, and everything's blood and pain, but now Azula can move again, and she  _ lashes out _ , kicking and punching and screaming and tearing at anything she can reach, except Mai and Ty Lee are gone and people are yelling and light is streaming in the windows-

She wakes up.

"Stop  _ struggling, _ " Sharp-Eyes hisses in her ear, pinning her down with her whole body weight. She's breathing hard, her hair dishevelled. Azula looks across the room and sees two other attendants cowering in the corner, one with long scratches across her face, the other nursing an oddly twisted wrist. " _ Stop _ ," Sharp-Eyes grunts, and moves her hand to grab Azula's other wrist.

Azula grabs it first, brings Sharp-Eyes's hand to her mouth, and bites down, hard.

She spends the next five days tied to a bed.

* * *

Zuko comes to visit her, too. She hopes every time she'll wake up when he rises to leave, but unlike Mai and Ty Lee, he's as real and solid as the gold flame in his topknot. 

_ Fire Lord Zuko. _

So, Father is dead.

She didn't think the little monk had it in him.

* * *

"You should eat," says Sharp-Eyes.

Azula doesn't move. 

Sharp-Eyes kicks her tray a little. " _ Eat, _ " she repeats, and Azula wants to be furious at being  _ told what to do, _ but somehow she just can't.

Sharp-Eyes kneels in front of her. "I'm Shiori," she tells Azula, who neither needs nor wants to know. 

* * *

_ The new Fire Lord _ comes to visit her quite often. 

Sometimes he talks. Sometimes not. 

"It doesn't have to be like this," he says once, voice soft and weak, just like him. 

"How was the  _ coronation? _ " she spits at him. It's the first thing she's said since she wasn't  _ locked up. _ "Do you still believe in the lie you're telling yourself, that you're  _ good, _ that  _ you're _ different?"

"I am different," Zuko says. He looks perfectly calm, but she's rattled him, she can tell. "Different from Ozai. And you can be, too."

"You're different  _ for now, _ " she sneers. "Poor  _ Prince _ Zuko, can't make his mind up about anything. You're on the Avatar's side today, but how long until you change your mind again?"

Zuko's gone white, she notes with satisfaction. 

"You're a traitor. It's in your nature, brother. You can't escape it. The  _ second _ something you can't resist comes along, you'll show your true colours."

"Stop it," he says, quiet and white, and his hands have begun to shake.

" _ Father _ would be  _ proud _ ," she hisses, and he flinches  _ hard _ , eyes gone wide and panicked, as he gets up and leaves. Suddenly everything's hilarious, and Azula laughs, wild and high-pitched, until her ribs hurt. 

**Author's Note:**

> i'm planning on expanding this into a much larger multi-fic story, so feel free to subscribe to the series! also, [i'm on tumblr!](https://zuko-best-boi.tumblr.com/)


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